“Jimmy Carter got the shortest end of the stick of any president in history,” super-producer Nile Rodgers perceptively declares in this joyous musical celebration of Georgia peanut farmer-turned US President and Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter: Rock ‘n’ Roll President gives us all the documentary proof we need of just how unjustly underappreciated Carter was, both politically and personally. As we learn, Carter was the first major politician to wear his love of contemporary music on his sleeve—Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and the Allman Brothers were a few of his favorites—and the entertaining documentary instructs us on just how Carter ingeniously used his deep musical appreciation to catapult himself into the Oval Office in 1976.
So how was it that a Baptist peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, could so comfortably preside over a late-1970s culture that saw the popular explosion of country-rock, punk, and disco? Quite naturally as it turns out. As Carter himself explains in the film, his love of gospel—much like his fellow Georgians James Brown and Little Richard—is what naturally led to his appreciation of not only rock but also jazz and country music. The central premise of Wharton’s film is that Carter, a mostly nationally unknown governor of Georgia in the mid-1970s, ascended to the White House through support from contemporary “New South”-friendly mega-stars in the music biz like the Allman Brothers, Johnny Cash, and Crosby Stills and Nash, among others. (The 1976 Democratic candidate race saw Carter and the Allmans up against Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown and The Eagles, in a sort of “battle of the bands” of political fundraising.)
Not only does the film offer extensive (and often candid) interviews with tack-sharp nonagenarian Carter, but Wharton rounds up an impressive parade of rock royalty—Bob Dylan, Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson, Nile Rodgers, Gregg Allman, Roseanne Cash, Bono, and others. They sing the former president’s praises and recite lines from his pithy poems. Wharton takes politics just as seriously as the music, as the film also serves as a much-needed sympathetic reevaluation of Carter’s widely misunderstood and sadly undervalued one-term presidency.
Although Carter was ahead of his time in many ways, especially on civil and human rights, he was also a victim of his time. Despite his groundbreaking efforts at striving for world peace, it would be oil shortages, hyperinflation, and an unwinnable hostage crisis in Iran that would eventually spell the end of Carter’s principled, non-violent, musically tasteful presidency. Wharton’s uplifting, heartfelt documentary is nothing short of an inspirational balm for the soul, especially for these dark political times in which the Leader of the Free World’s ideas of cultural sophistication involve poker-playing dog paintings. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. H.